Producer and violinist FOHN explores memory, displacement & new identities in a moving, expansive set informed by Ireland’s island life, marine folklore & musical tradition.

Tom Connolly, violinist in Bristol’s celebrated experimental quartet Quade, adopts the moniker FOHN as he debuts solo record Seanteach (Irish for ‘old house’). An explorative, wandering & landscaped record that mines deeply personal and intimate reflections. A soundscape of traditional Irish fiddle with the warm wash of ambient electronics & evocative field recordings. The record is an exploration of Tom’s relationship with Ireland and in particular his family’s close connection to Connemara along the West coast.

The considered weight of carrying history, sharing stories or learning a tune is woven through these new compositions. The island of Maighinis where Tom’s grandmother grew up casts a rich light across the record. The island’s strong presence, where Tom holidayed every Summer whilst growing up in England, became a sort of mythological space as well as offering, in it’s echoes, mental solace, matriarch power & the deep pull of imagination & history.

Tom reflects that the compositions often ‘sit at the fraying edges of memories’ informed by generational stories, Irish mythology and coastal life - a liminal space between ‘documentation and fantasy’ amongst the Connemara landscape ‘charcoaled with deserted ruins’. Lamenting, graceful airs portray stories bound with the tensions of sadness, pride & place. New compositions drawing on folklore, the supernatural and Tom’s studies in Anglo- Saxon, Norse & Celtic literature.

Just as the theme of water runs through Seanteach so too does Tom’s exploration of disconnect & distance. Despite deep familial ties & rich memories of visiting, Ireland is presented as a space to “explore the idea of longing for something/somewhere ‘un-experienced’” and in essence imagined.

Seanteach is an embroidery of textures and an approach to composition that dissolves distinctions between Sean-nós singing, the soulful Irish fiddle player Martin Hayes and the poise of The Gloaming’s Caoimhin O’Raghallaigh with the environmental music & sound art of Japanese composer FujiIIIIIIta or Norwegian hardanger tradition.

Released in October, this is a rich album amongst an already exquisite catalogue from Odda Recordings. FOHN is a significant new voice exploring contemporary Irish music and generational Irish history. Tonight will be a wonderful chance to celebrate the release of Seanteach in Bristol.

Flaer

Creative artist and multi-instrumentalist Flaer (Realf Heygate) composes chamber music which is both minimalist and rural in that it makes sound links between our memories, our histories & the shifting landscape & cultural reading of the English countryside.

His debut album, Preludes was recorded on 4-track tape with acoustic instrumentation of cello, piano & guitar and presents a series of linked tone poems. These weave field recordings of birdsong, church bells and the natural environment into flickering melodic vignettes that explore Heygate’s childhood experiences of rural England. The Quietus called it a “miniature masterpiece of the instrumental uncanny” & the moods convey something of the atmospheric landscapes in the paintings of Paul Nash and the pastoral chamber music ambience of Virginia Astley’s 1983 masterpiece ‘From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.’

Passages of brightness give way to melodies on the edge of loss, gently distorting within the recording practice of combining raw demos with overdubbed parts. His recent EP, Burrow, takes its name from the Iron Age hill fort and ancient earthworks that loomed above the valley where Heygate grew up, existing in the tensions between “the bleak and the beautiful, the familiar and the strange”. Heygate’s minimalist, graceful & considered laments echo something of Edward Thomas’s observation from In Pursuit of Spring as “the slow stealing away of day...the beauty of this slow fading”. Both Preludes & Burrow explore the embedded histories of place as sources of comfort & tension, history & identity. 

Praise for Preludes:

4* Mojo / “Pastoral tranquility cedes to darker forces” 4/5 Songlines / “Hedgerow greens and sky blue translucence register as vividly as a stroll through the tranquil countryside.” Electronic Sound

Rosie Brownhill

An instrumentalist & composer from rural Staffordshire. Rosie grew up immersed in traditional music and has a repertoire across flute, penny whistle, guitar, accordion & chord organ. Her gentle sound evokes a quiet reading of rural landscapes through intricate finger-style guitar, pedal drawn chord organ & penny whistle jigs. Rosie explores traditional tunes along with her own compositions & recently provided a live soundtrack to a stop-motion animation at Stafford’s Pocket Film Festival. With the hazy Summer’s memory of her afternoon set at Supernormal festival this year it’s a pleasure to welcome Rosie to Bristol as we usher in the warmth of Autumn light.